Lark Ascending

by Meagan Spooner

  “I know what it is.” Nix buzzed up and hovered over Oren’s shoulder. It must have returned to the room after Kris dropped me off at headquarters to talk to Caesar. “It’s from a police walker. It’s a siren.”

  For a long moment I froze, too stupid with fear and memories—They’re coming for me, they’ll chase me through the Wall again, I’ll be all alone—to move. There was more than one siren—I could hear the slight difference in frequency so clearly that the pitches throbbed in waves against my eardrums. People had begun to flood the corridor, running and shuffling past, a stream of grubby, panicked people blurring in front of my eyes.

  Then Oren reached into the stream and plucked one of the fleeing people out by his arm.

  “What’s going on?” Oren demanded of him. “Where is everyone going?”

  “The Hub, like we drill,” gasped the man, out of breath. “You should know this, why don’t you—”

  “This is some sort of practice?” I cut him off, impatient.

  He shook his head, fear quaking through his shoulders. “Not this time. They don’t turn them all on unless it’s for real.”

  “Tell me what the alarm is for,” Oren shouted over the noise, giving his captive a little shake.

  “Pixies.” The man gulped. “It means pixies have gotten inside.” He tore himself free of Oren’s grip and vanished into the current. Oren and I sheltered in the doorway, letting the others rush past. Nix buzzed in under my hair to rest in the hollow of my collarbone.

  “Pixies like Nix?” Oren said, brow furrowed as his eyes flicked toward the machine where it nestled in against my neck. I knew that look—it was the city people, how weak look. Yesterday I would have secretly shared in his disdain. But now all I could see was my brother Caesar tugging at his patch as he described the way the Institute’s machines had torn his eye from its socket.

  I swallowed. “It’s different now. Kris was right. They’ve reprogrammed them.”

  “And someone like you cannot fight them,” added Nix, its multifaceted eyes fixed on Oren. It sounded almost smug. “We’re too quick to fight without magic.”

  Oren’s jaw clenched visibly. Telling Oren he couldn’t fight something was like telling the rain it couldn’t fall.

  “Let’s go,” I cut in before Oren could snap at Nix. “We’ll head to the Hub as well—maybe they’ve got a plan for this. Maybe I can help.”

  I should have said we. Maybe we can help. But the words were already out, and I could see the tension in Oren’s stance. But he just nodded. “Let’s go.”

  We retraced the path Kris had taken when he guided us to our room. The traffic in the corridors had died down, and by the time we reached the Hub, it was packed with people. There were more rebels than I’d realized, far more than I’d seen the day before. Caesar stood on a table at the far end of the room, trying to shout over the cries and demands of the people gathered around him, but making no headway. If my heart wasn’t pounding so hard, I would’ve smiled to see him so disorganized. No wonder Kris believed these people needing someone else to unite them.

  I gave Oren’s hand a squeeze and then let go, readying myself to start pushing through the crowd toward Caesar. But just as I reached the edge of the chaos, a shudder ran through my body, halting me. My ears rang, and for an instant my second sight clicked over and all I could see was a jumble of heartbeats and the haze of background energy that hung in the air inside the Wall. Then light blinded me.

  I staggered back, jerking away. Eve stepped up onto the table behind Caesar, and if I focused hard, I could keep my second sight at bay, watching them with streaming eyes. She’d gotten her glow under control, and though her white skin and hair still gleamed in the lantern light, she no longer shone with her own illumination. At least, not to the ordinary sight.

  The noise of the crowd ebbed in waves and gasps, all eyes on her. She was pretty, in an eerie, inhuman way, with striking features and grace—but it was something else that made the crowd fall silent, staring. An air about her, something compelling that even made me want to stop, to drop all my plans to fight the pixies. I tore my eyes away as she began to speak.

  “I know I’ve only just arrived here,” she said, her voice clear, carrying across the room even though she didn’t sound like she was raising her voice. “But I want to help. I believe I can keep us safe. But I need all of you to trust me. I need you to believe in me. Can you do that?”

  I kept my eyes to the side, not wanting to watch her—her speech was compelling enough as it was, making me long to just let her guide me, too, the way she’d guided me when I escaped from the Institute. Follow the birds, she’d told me then. When I’d wanted to bring her with me, she’d also said, It’s too late for me.

  What had changed?

  Blinking, I realized that my eyes were gazing at a familiar face. There were a handful of people clustered around someone at the edge of the Hub. Tamren? There was blood everywhere, and the people gathered around were trying to stop the bleeding.

  “Tamren! What happened?” I ran to his side and dropped to my knees.

  “Pixies,” he gasped, one of his lips swollen and cracked. His face looked like someone had tried to play tic-tac-toe on it, crisscrossed with scratches. “They came in my entrance.”

  One of the scratches on his face was a lot deeper than the others—this was the source of all the blood. One of the medics was trying to stitch it up, and though their movements were deft enough, I knew Tamren would have a scar there the rest of his life.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, wishing I could reach out to give his hand a squeeze. But Eve’s presence made the shadow lurking inside me hungry, and I didn’t trust myself. Tamren had been harvested of most of his magic when he was a child, but there was still the tiny kernel inside him keeping his heart beating. I steadied myself with an effort.

  Tamren started to nod, eliciting an irritated sound from the man stitching up his face. “Yeah,” he said instead. “I’ll be okay. I don’t know how they found us. I don’t know what I did wrong.”

  The other two medics tending to Tamren had begun to shuffle away toward the crowd. When I looked up, I realized that they’d turned toward the table on which Eve was standing with Caesar—they were listening to her. She was still talking. I could feel her influence in the room like a heavy mist, making it hard to breathe, hard to think. No wonder even the medics, with a job to do, were drifting away.

  When the person stitching Tamren’s face lifted his head too, I put myself in between him and Eve. “Focus,” I snapped at him.

  I didn’t have time to analyze the power Eve seemed to have over these people, no matter how much I envied her ability to command a room. If only I had that power myself, I could be exactly the leader Kris seemed to think I was. Instead I was crouching at the back of the room, trying desperately to keep one man’s attention long enough for him to stitch up my friend.

  “Do you know how many there were?” I asked Tamren, whose own gaze had started to wander—though I couldn’t be sure whether that was due to Eve’s influence or the blood loss.

  “Only one at first—but then there were others. A dozen, two, I don’t know. And there were more coming. I managed to get the door shut behind me, but they know it’s there now, they’ll be breaking through. Maybe they have already. Miss Lark—” He broke off with a gasp as the medic tied off the last stitch with a tug.

  I let the medic wander off—the rest of his supplies were scattered on the floor, and I retrieved a pot of salve and some sticking bandages.

  Tamren’s wide eyes were fixed on my shoulder, and I realized that Nix was still there, peeking at him through my hair.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “Remember? Nix is our friend. He’s not going to hurt you.”

  “There were so many of them,” Tamren whispered. He was younger than me, younger even than I was when I first left the city. And he hadn’t had my experiences, had never been in a frantic, scrabbling fight for his life. I was amazed he was forming coherent
sentences.

  “I’m going to stop them,” I told Tamren firmly. “I promise. It wasn’t your fault.” I couldn’t help but think of the way he’d almost shot me with his crossbow; Tamren wasn’t the most competent of people, but it’d do no good to let him think he was responsible for this. Not right now, anyway.

  Even Tamren was starting to drift. The pain twisting his features softened a little, eyes wandering past my face to fix on the crowd beyond me. From his prone position on the floor, he wouldn’t be able to see Eve on her makeshift dais—and yet he stared in her direction anyway as if he could, as if he could see through the masses of people, flesh and bone and the miasma of panic, and lock his eyes on her.

  “Tamren,” I said—nothing. “Tamren!” I shouted more sharply.

  His eyes refocused, blinking. “Miss Lark,” he said, voice thick and rusty.

  “Did you hear what I said?” I gave his arm a squeeze, the one not covered in scratches from the pixie needles. “I said I’m going to stop them.”

  Tamren nodded. “I believe you, Miss Lark.” But then his eyes slid away again. “She—she’ll save us.”

  I lifted my head again, letting myself focus back on Eve. Even I could feel the power behind her voice, the confidence and grace and charisma. People were standing taller, breathing easier. The fear was ebbing.

  “With your help,” she was saying, her white eyes sweeping across the crowd, bathing everyone in the gentle warmth of her smile, “I can protect us. Stay at my side. Have faith.”

  I tried to concentrate, to sense whether she was actually doing anything, but I couldn’t perceive much beyond the general flare of magic writhing within her. “She’s going to stupefy them into standing here while the pixies come,” I said, heart sinking.

  Tamren didn’t answer, but I wasn’t speaking to him. I turned toward Oren—or toward where I had expected him to be, at my side. He was gone. Heart suddenly pounding, I scanned the crowd until I spotted him, standing with the others, listening to Eve speak.

  “I will go with you,” said a crystalline voice by my ear.

  “Nix,” I whispered. “What’s going on?”

  “I believe she offers them something they cannot resist,” Nix answered. “Not even that one.”

  “What?”

  But Nix only thrummed thoughtfully, wings fluttering and stirring my hair.

  I checked Tamren’s bandage again, but there was no sign the gash was bleeding through. So I stood and made my way back to Oren, reaching for his arm. He turned as soon as I touched him, and I tried to see from his gaze whether he was as muddled as the medics. But it was too hard to read him.

  “Let’s go,” I said, keeping my voice calm with an effort. “The pixies came in through the same entrance we came through, the one Tamren was guarding. If we go now we might be able to stop them before they find their way to the Hub.”

  Oren nodded slowly. But when I started to turn away, my hand still in his, he resisted. “I’m going to stay here,” he said.

  My hand went limp. “What?” I whispered.

  Oren tilted his head toward Eve, who was now addressing individuals in the crowd, smiling and reassuring them. “If the pixies get past you, these people will need someone to help them.”

  “You mean Eve will need someone to help her,” I said. I couldn’t hide the bitterness in my voice, and as soon as I heard it my heart shriveled.

  But Oren only shook his head, his mouth twitching into a smile, grim as his voice was. “Lark, it’s me. I wouldn’t stay behind if I didn’t think it was right. But you heard Nix, there’s nothing I can do against these pixies. You’ve got the magic; you can fight them. But if they break through, Eve will need as many level heads here as possible to evacuate the people. I can help there.”

  If they break through, I thought, it’ll be because I failed, and I’m dead.

  Oren had never once left me to fight alone. I tried not to think of it as abandonment, tried to see it as the compliment it was. That he believed I could win, that I didn’t need him looking over my shoulder. But instead I could only see the way Tamren’s eyes glazed over as he listened to Eve. Nix buzzed quietly on my shoulder, for my ears alone. Not even Oren, Nix had said, could resist whatever Eve offered.

  I could lose everyone and be fine. I could lose Tamren, and Kris, and my brother; I could lose every person here, and I’d be just as strong. But I couldn’t lose Oren.

  He must have sensed my turmoil, because he turned to face me properly, pulling me in close so he could dip his head and brush his lips against mine. “You’ve faced so much worse than this,” he said softly. “If you trust me, believe me when I tell you that you don’t need me.”

  It was true there was little he could do to help me in this kind of fight. But I wanted him anyway. I always wanted him. His faith in me made mine stronger.

  I wished I could believe his decision was only logic and had nothing to do with the woman in white on the dais, murmuring gently to the crowd. But I nodded and stepped back. His arms fell away.

  “Good hunting, Lark.”

  CHAPTER 11

  The darkness in the tunnels closed in around me as I retraced my steps back toward Tamren’s exit. I could have brought a lantern, but I didn’t know whether these upgraded pixies were like Nix. If they had eyes, like it did, then they’d be able to see the light.

  And so I stumbled along, trying to do what Eve had done in the memory-dream that we’d shared. She’d somehow managed to see using magic, casting it out in an arc before her and reading the way it bounced back from the stones. Between my half-blind groping and Nix’s help, I managed to pick up my pace with only a few scrapes on my knees and one barked shin.

  My pounding heart sent the blood rushing past my ears, roaring like the waterfall at the summer lake. There I’d been running from the shadows. Now I was running to the pixies. I tried not to dwell on the fact that I was pretty sure I’d prefer shadows. At least they were something like a real opponent.

  “Wait,” Nix buzzed into my ear. “Stop.”

  I skidded to a halt, shoes sliding in the muck lining the floor of the tunnel. I wanted to ask the pixie what it had heard, but my whisper would carry. I waited, tingling.

  “Tamren’s door is just ahead,” Nix thrummed. “They haven’t broken through yet. But they’re close.”

  Now that Nix had alerted me, and my own footsteps were no longer masking it, I could hear the faint pinging and grinding sounds. They were trying to cut their way in. I hurried forward until I reached the door, stopping just short of it. I ran my palm down its surface. I closed my eyes, reaching out with my magic, trying to get something, anything, even a hint of the shapes swarming around the exit. Nothing came.

  The sounds were growing louder, and I risked a whisper. “I can’t get to them through the door,” I gasped to Nix, feeling sweat beginning to form at my temples, along the nape of my neck. Despite the clammy chill of the tunnels, my skin burned.

  “You’ll have to open it to fight them.”

  I shook my head, leaning against the door. The metal vibrated against my skin, quaking under the efforts of the swarm beyond trying to get inside. “I can’t tell how many of them there are. There could be three of them—there could be three hundred.”

  “They will get through that door,” said Nix. “Wouldn’t it be better to be ready?”

  Fight them on my terms. It made sense—except there was no way to be certain I could handle what was on the other side of the door. I leaned in close, pressing my ear to the cold metal. If my magic couldn’t sense what was out there, maybe one of my other senses could.

  I could hear them out there, whirring and grinding and clicking, testing the seams of the door and slamming against the hinges. The wheel-lock was too heavy and too tightly sealed; they were trying to break their way in. At least one at the top of the hinges; one at the bottom; one at the lower edge of the door, where I could hear that incessant, shrieking grinding sound. At least three. No, four. There was a whin
ing whir that buzzed from top to bottom; five. My ears continued to adjust, and I picked out a sixth, a seventh, an eighth distinct sound. My heart sank more and more with each new sound.

  Maybe if I waited, Eve would come. If I stood guard here and held my ground long enough, perhaps she’d come to help me. Nix thrummed impatiently. “I’m thinking,” I snapped.

  Then a new sound broke through my indecision. A quiet, metallic pinging came from somewhere over my head. It was too dark to see, but I’d thought there was only stone overhead, nothing that could make a metallic sound.

  The tone of the pixies beyond the door shifted. The grinding stopped, and then the hammering at the hinges too. One of them gave a whining buzz that reminded me of Nix when it got overexcited. It came again, a little further along; it was moving, whatever it was.

  Abruptly a memory flashed into my mind. These had once been sewer tunnels. When Basil taught me how to navigate the tunnels near our apartment and the school, he’d taught me to look up—the tunnels were all the same, but for the network of pipes that ran overhead, connecting all the buildings to each other and to the water main.

  The pixies were in the pipes.

  I leaped back, eyes trying frantically to focus without any light. It was so dark I couldn’t tell whether my eyes were open or closed. But one thing had changed: the pipes were made of copper. I could see now.

  The instant I called on my second sight I could see them. Overhead, through the copper, was a line of tiny machines, glowing with magic, crawling along a narrow section of pipe that led straight back toward the Hub.

  “Lark—”

  “I see them,” I hissed.

  The shadow lurking inside me swelled, alerted by the adrenaline coursing through my system. Finally, here was prey I’d let it have. I reached up, grasping at the magic of the pixie in front, and gave a savage twist. It was barely more than a drop to the vast desert that was my inner shadow, but the pixie overhead went dark.